Ukrainian police detains retiree distributing St. George ribbons

Ukrainian police detained a 66 year old retiree who laid St. George ribbons and leaflets on shelves with Roshen products in a supermarket, and they brought him to a police station in the city of Dnepropetrovsk (now Dnipro), the Ukrainian publication Vesti reported on August 16.

The leaflets distributed by the retiree called for a boycott of Roshen products (Ukrainian President Pyotr Poroshenko owns this factory). The leaflets said that those who buy Poroshenko’s candies “fund the killings of Ukrainian citizens unwilling to submit to the neo-Nazi junta”.

According to the publication, the Security Service of Ukraine (SSU, Ukrainian: SBU) became interested in the person who distributed the St. George ribbons and leaflets. SBU officials visited the place where the retiree was detained. According to Vesti, the man who distributed the St. George ribbons previously avoided detention, because he quickly left the shops.

The retiree was brought to the police station, and a protocol was filed under two administrative articles: Article 173-3 (manufacturing and propaganda of the St. George ribbon) and Article 259 (knowingly false report of a threat to public security) of the Ukrainian Code of Administrative Violations.

On June 15, the law “On the prohibition of the manufacturing and propaganda of the St. George ribbon” went into effect in Ukraine. According to the law, any public use, demonstration, or wearing of the St. George ribbon or its image is punished by a fine of 50 to 150 individual income tax exemption amounts (850 to 2550 hrivnya, which is equivalent to approx.. 2000 to 6000 roubles) and confiscation of the ribbon or the items bearing its image. Those who repeatedly violate the law will face a double fine or an administrative arrest for 15 days.

Since the coup d’etat in early 2014, the new Ukrainian authorities have been consistently pursuing a policy of the derussification and decommunization of Ukraine. For example, in 2014 all major Russian TV channels were banned in Ukraine, then a wave of violence against Soviet memorials and monuments began, followed by a wave of renaming streets, cities, and other geographical places that the Ukrainian authorities perceived to be connected to the USSR and Russia. All the while, people wearing St. George ribbons have been persecuted. Since 2017, the St. George ribbon is completely banned along with the Victory Banner. Ukrainian nationalists call the St. George ribbon “Colorado ribbon”, and the Russian-speaking population “Colorado beetles” [thus refering to Russian-speaking people as pests, which must be exterminated – Editor].